‘How To Save Sex’ Review – Coming-Of-Age Drama Provides A Powerful Look At Sex And Consent [Sundance 2024]

In what promises to be the vacation to end all vacations, three best friends, Tara, Skye, and Em, look to kick off adulthood with fun and romance. Once at their hotel, the three girls meet some guys in the neighboring hotel balcony. Tara, who is the last remaining virgin of her friend group, plans to make this a summer trip to remember. Through nights of heavy drinking and dancing until dawn, the trip looks promising. However, Tara submits to social pressure and, after a sexual encounter, finds herself isolated, disillusioned, and violated. How to Have Sex paints a brutal picture of sexual consent that is particularly apt in the post-Me-Too era. The fluidity of scenes coupled with authentic performances, including a breakout by Mia McKenna-Bruce, gives this film both an autobiographical and hauntingly memorable quality.

At the start, How To Have Sex is a coming-of-age teen drama. Three friends, Tara (McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake), and Em (Enva Lewis), are looking forward to a summer filled with laughs and romance. Director Molly Manning Walker brilliantly takes her time by showcasing the three girls partying and living it up. The story is a slow burn, which at first is a bit jarring, giving the film a ninety-minute runtime. However, it soon becomes clear this is Walker’s choice. There is no dramatic build-up or faux setting where the film plays like a traditional story. Moreover, this film is a day (or days) in the lives of these three girls, with a particular focus on Tara. 

Despite the best intentions of many celebrated films, real life is far from flashy. Moments are fleeting. Moments are anecdotes or vignettes. A night out can be a hash of memories and loud sounds. This is where Walker excels in her debut film. She is not crafting a neat narrative where all the loose ends are tied up by the end of Act Three. Instead, she takes a more autobiographical approach, letting moments reveal themselves through glances, strained expressions, and isolation. 

The emphasis on Tara and the need to lose her virginity brilliantly indict the quixotic teen comedies of a different era. This is no Sixteen Candles but an authentic and, at times, brutal portrait of sexual experiences and consent. McKenna-Bruce is no doubt a star in the making. Her performance is the base on which the whole film rests.

From the film’s start, Tara is shown as eager but reserved. It is only after her sexual encounter that she projects a face mixed with fear and pain. She cannot explain what has happened to her, as she cannot fully comprehend the ramifications of her rape. McKenna-Bruce expresses silent pain in Tara, yet on screen, the character can never articulate her suffering, even to her friends. This situation is by design of the story. Despite their bold instance, Tara and her friends are not yet adults and, therefore, cannot navigate a world just beyond their reach. They may act like adults, but they are only beginning to understand the pains and trials of adulthood. Tara is the lynchpin of this dichotomy. This deafening loneliness and numbing isolation is never explained through dialogue but through her eyes.

Again, this is where McKenna-Bruce demonstrates her star-making chops. Her ability to convey a thousand emotions through stares makes her performance more powerful. Walker utilizes the camera to show a world off-balance. The audience and Tara become disjointed as she tries to navigate her new reality. Though only a few syllables, she holds back tears and manages to convey rejection, fear, pain, humiliation, and suffering better than many actors would with pages of monologues. It is this quiet moment of isolation in which Tara finds herself as she processes the ramifications of what happened to her. 

Walker peppers these moments throughout the film, and it is how McKenna-Bruce, for the lack of a better word, shines in this film. 

How to Have Sex never beleaguers the point nor swims in the excesses of exposition. Dramatic moments unveil through fragmented conversations or stunted expressions. By the film’s end, Tara becomes increasingly withdrawn and is nearly swallowed by her discomfort and loneliness. Walker, again, lets these moments play out as they might in real life. There is no turning-point moment or tidy resolution. There is simply endurance. 

The film lives up to its unique title. There are no rosy glasses constructs of sex and consent. The film is raw and unrelenting yet guided by a layered lead performance and a stunning directorial debut. How To Have Sex is devastating and envelops the audience with gritty emotion and fear.

How To Have Sex was screened in the Spotlight section of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The film will be released in U.S. theaters on February 2, 2024, courtesy of Mubi.

Director: Molly Manning Walker

Writer: Molly Manning Walker

Rated: R

Runtime: 90m